


Drown Into Eyes While They're Still Blind

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: A Thin Red Line Between Stubborn Spirits [3]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Battle Couple, Bisexual Power Couple, Blind Cara, Blood and Injury, F/M, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Protective Din Djarin, Slow Burn, Temporary Blindness, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-19 02:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22037257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: “Think about the kid!” she yells, but it’s barely a whisper in the fire rising around them.The hunters will be coming for them, now, or the child could die with Cara and Din. There is no way out.“The kid is fine, it’s you I need to think about!” Din still objects.There is a part of him telling him it’s hopeless, that he can’t save her, that the only sensible thing to do is to leave her here and save the baby. But his body refuses to move.“Just get out of here, you nerf-herder!” Cara cries, her voice breaking in a way that pierces painfully through Din's soul.He knows what he has to do. He just doesn’t know if he has the strength to do it. Honour compels him to put the child first; something more powerful than that makes his arms tighten around Cara."No!"
Relationships: Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: A Thin Red Line Between Stubborn Spirits [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579576
Comments: 34
Kudos: 356





	Drown Into Eyes While They're Still Blind

**Author's Note:**

> There are two things I really can't write: smut and action. This work is basically all action, meaning it's all rubbish. On the bright side, the following installment will be so much better because it won't be tainted by this sorry excuse of a chapter. I promise, guys: it's just this one. Next one's going to be longer and better (so many CaraDin feels coming!), don't give up on me! 😅

After the few days of rest on Hesper VI, stepping back on the Razor Crest feels like walking out of a daydream.

It’s been strange, living a shred of domesticity with Cara and the kid. It gave Din a taste of what his life could have been without the Way, and it’s a taste that still lingers on his tongue, sweet and foreign, or maybe it’s just him refusing to let go.

Even now, with his back pressed to a wall as blasters fire against him, somehow his mind still keeps going back to the quiet hut at the edge of the desert where he would wake up to the warmth of Cara’s body sleeping beside him and the kid snoring in his cot at the foot of the bed.

“I told you stopping for fuel on Coruscant was a mistake!” Cara growls, ducking under a barrel to avoid a blaster shot. Her excellent hearing has been making up for where her eyes fail.

She called it before they even landed, and Din, like a fool, was too preoccupied with planning the provisions for the next few days to listen to her. He was blatantly wrong, of course: they came to this shop to get some spare parts for the ship and never walked out of it.

There’s no way out: the only entrance to the back warehouse they’re hiding in is guarded by a handful of armed bounty hunters. Some of them Din knows, others he’s never seen. It was plain bad luck they ran into them in a place as unlikely as this harmless family-run shop.

“IG would have been helpful, now,” whines Cara. “But, no, let’s leave the big bad nanny droid on the ship!”

Din groans.

He abandons his cover to roll behind the barrel with Cara, who sneers when he crawls up, panting, to kneel back to back with her.

“You were right, okay?” he grunts. A shot skims his shoulder. He thanks the Beskar for sparing him another unpleasant wound. “We need to get out of here. We can’t fight them from inside.”

The old owner lies dead in the middle of the room among thousands of glass shards from the broken windows of her shop. She’s not important to the hunters: they want the kid, and Din wouldn’t be surprised if there were good rewards for himself and Cara as well. The only reason the hunters haven’t reached them yet is that the place is stacked with inflammable goods, literally a giant ticking bomb. If one of their blasters hits the wrong box, Din and Cara are dead, but the kid would be safe, protected by his cot, an easy target served on a silver plate.

“I could go out as a decoy,” Cara whispers. “It would distract them, buy you some time to-”

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re blind, you can’t even defend yourself!” hisses Din, his tone sharp and metallic under the helmet. He would maybe consider her plan if she were at her full potential, but without her sight? That’s suicide.

“You have a better idea?” she insists.

“I’m thinking.”

The fire stops. Bad sign.

They’re waiting for Din's next move.

“Come out, Mando!” calls the guttural, unmistakable growl of Gahr Ru, an old acquaintance Din would have happily lived without seeing again, even in different circumstances. “If you surrender now, we’ll let you and the lady go. It’s the Asset we want.”

Cara curses between her teeth, eyes focused, listening. “How many are they? Eight? There’s no way we can make it.”

No, there isn’t.

They need a plan. Quickly.

“With my Beskar, I could hold them off long enough for you to sneak away with the kid.”

He doesn’t actually believe any of this; he just needs Cara to believe it so that she and the child can run and save themselves.

But Cara is no fool. She jabs her blaster into his arm, hard. Admirable precision, too. “Don’t you even go there! If I can’t be a diversion, neither can you!”

Din can’t honestly say he wasn't expecting this response.

“I can buy more time than you would!” he objects. Why won’t she see this is their best chance? “I may even be able to take them down if-”

“Where you go, I go! That is not negotiable!”

“It’s our only hope to save the child!”

Cara groans angrily. Her back is glued to Din's: he can feel her every breath as if it was his own. He thinks he’s finally convinced her when he hears her mutter: "You're one of those people who love things only when they're doomed, aren't you?"

He doesn’t know what that is supposed to mean. Except maybe he does. Maybe it makes sense. Maybe too much sense.

He wants to tell her she’s wrong, but she’s not. He recognises himself in her words, and realises he’s never let himself get attached to anything or anyone he would have to be there for. Until now.

"Why would anyone do that?" he says, since he can’t seem to lie to Cara’s face. Funny, because he's an exceptional liar, despite what she claims.

Cara scoffs, like she can smell his bullshit but doesn’t want to twist the blade.

" 'cause love is easier if you won't have to face it. Bet you sold the little guy before your guilt kicked in and made you go back for him."

Din’s eyes dart to the locked cot. Just thinking about what could have happened to the kid if he hadn’t had a change of heart makes him sick. The little one looks at him like he hung every single star in the sky and he feels like he doesn’t deserve this after what he almost did to him.

Cara is right.

So right it’s suspicious.

"You sound like you know exactly what you're talking about."

He doesn’t know why he said this. Out of spite, perhaps, to make her feel as exposed as she made him feel. There must be something behind this, she can’t just read him _this_ well.

Cara is silent. Her empty stare is fixed on the ground.

"No,” she says, her voice so small it makes Din regret his insinuation. “But I knew someone like you, once."

The way she says it... it’s so bitter, so full grief...

"What happened to them?"

"She died with her regrets.” Cara swallows, licks her lips. “And left me to live with mine."

If they weren’t trapped and surrounded by enemies, Din would inquire further, both intrigued and envious of whoever could get such a heart-broken tone out of Cara Dune.

"Sounds like a romantic tragedy."

Cara nods with a blue smile. "It was.”

She looks away, hiding from Din. He will never know if he just imagined the shimmer in her eyes; when she turns again, it’s gone.

“So, what do we do? It’s-”

The crate they’re hiding behind explodes. Wooden shards fly everywhere as more shots follow the one that blew their cover. Din's ears are ringing; he opens his eyes to find Cara lying on one side in a pool of blood that is rapidly enlarging.

His heart stops.

“Cara!”

He crawls up to her, thinking _'Please, please be fine',_ despite knowing all too well she can’t possibly be.

He looks around: the child’s cot has flown a few feet back due to the explosion, but it’s unscathed. He calls it back to himself, then carefully gathers Cara in his arms. A sigh of relief escapes his lips when he hears her moan. There’s a big gush in her side, bleeding copiously. If he doesn’t stop it, it might be fatal.

He rips his cloak off his shoulders, crumples it up frantically and presses it onto the wound. Cara cries in pain.

“I’m sorry.” He tries to be more gentle, one hand pressing on the wound, the other supporting her head. “I need to stop the bleeding,” he adds apologetically. He would spare her this torture if he could. “There’s no other way.”

She sucks in a sharp breath, and a curse gets stuck between her teeth.

“You need to go,” she pants. She tries to shove him away, to no avail. She’s weak. Too weak.

“You have the Beskar,” she insists, and he can taste tears in her voice, even if in her eyes there are none. “The kid has the cot. You two can make it if-”

Din refuses to listen. He takes her arm and drapes it over his shoulders.

“I’ll shield you. Come on-”

But he can’t carry her _and_ keep the wound compressed. If only he'd listened to her and brought IG along-

He collapses to his knees and tries again. And again. And again.

“I’ll only slow you down!” Cara snaps, angry and desperate, fighting as hard as she can to slip away from his grip. Din holds her more firmly, squeezing until he’s afraid he might be hurting her.

“Don’t make me knock you out!”

“Think about the kid!” she yells, but it’s barely a whisper in the fire rising around them.

The hunters will be coming for them, now, or the child could die with Cara and Din. There is no way out.

“The kid is fine, it’s you I need to think about!” Din still objects.

There is a part of him telling him it’s hopeless, that he can’t save her, that the only sensible thing to do is to leave her here and save the baby. But his body refuses to move.

“Just get out of here, you nerf-herder!” Cara cries, her voice breaking in a way that pierces painfully through Din's soul.

He knows what he has to do. He just doesn’t know if he has the strength to do it. Honour compels him to put the child first; something more powerful than that makes his arms tighten around Cara.

"No!"

Among the chaos and the flames, an arrogant sneer rises.

“Oh, Mando? We’re coming for you!”

The hunters. They’re here.

Din is struggling to focus. He can feel Cara growing weaker and weaker in his arms.

He has one card left to play: the stunning gas grenade.

He picks up the shell from his belt, rips off the safety pin, then tosses it across the room, praying his blind aim strikes, then pulls Cara tight to his chest, waiting.

The detonation shoots yellow gas in every direction. Din holds his breath, counting the seconds with the hunters' screams and the roar of the fire filling the air all around him.

When the screams die out, he finally dares to look again: eight writhing figures lie among the debris on the ground.

From here, they have three minutes.

_Three._

"You need to go, Din!" Cara breathes, still pressed against him, trying to push him away.

Din gently eases her down to his lap.

"Shut up and let me take a look at you. We don’t have long."

"You're so damn obstinate!”

"Yeah, that makes two of us.” Without ceremony, he slides his hand up her flank under his cloak. The blood is everywhere. He can feel the raw flesh where the shattered wood tore it, and it’s worse than he feared.

“May I-" he begins, but Cara, with whatever little energy she has left, laughs at him.

"Knock yourself out," she croaks. "Whatever little modesty was left in me, your open admiration for my legs must have wiped it away."

Despite the situation, Din can’t help a small smile.

"You noticed."

Of course she noticed. Even without seeing how he looks at her, she can’t have missed how his hands always linger longer than necessary when he treats the wound in her thigh, how he still helps her dress and undress, even though they both know she doesn’t need him to. And yet she still lets him.

"You're not subtle,” she notes while Din delicately lifts her torn shirt to check the wound. She attempts another laugh, but her features contract into a grimace. “I'll admit,” she pants. “I'm kinda flattered, though."

"Just flattered?" he teases. He’s doing his best to keep her talking. She lost so much blood... he can’t let her lose consciousness.

Cara humours him, even if Din can read on her face she already knows how serious her injury is. She’s probably already accepted what he can’t bring himself to accept.

"Pleased? Is that what you wanted to hear?" she retorts, a vain attempt to sound playful that quickly turns into another grimace. The blood isn’t stopping.

"Maybe,” Din hears himself reply, but his brain is somewhere else, buzzing with the desperate calculations of odds and hopes. Hopes they do not have.

Cara is right: he seems to love things only when they’re doomed.

_Two._

His hands are trembling when he presses his cloak, drenched in her blood, back to Cara’s side.

“This is bad, Cara.”

There’s no need to tell her what she already knows. She gives a faint nod, teeth clenched, eyes screwed in pain.

"Trust me, I can tell."

"We're going to fix you,” he promises. Lies. “You're going to be okay."

Cara whimpers.

"I know I've said this before, but you're a terrible liar.”

Din's nails dig in her back. He wishes he could lie at least to himself.

“Hey, it's okay,” she soothes hoarsely. “There's no point in both of us dying in this hole. Just take the kid and go. It's okay."

“No, it’s not!”

Nothing is okay. This whole predicamnet is not okay, Din himself is not okay, and Cara bleeding out in his arms is not okay.

"I'm not letting you die in here!" she screams in his face, and he realises he’s holding her too close, too intimately.

"I'm not letting _you_ die in here!" he screams back.

"Why are you being so kriffing _dense?"_

"You _know_ why!"

She knows.

She knows, doesn't she?

She _must_ know, he muses. How can she not? He hasn't been subtle, she said this herself. How can she ask him to abandon her here?

Ignoring her and her protests, he tries one more time. He manages to raise to his feet, Cara leaning into him, her legs threatening to give in any moment.

She huffs at his unrelenting determination.

"If we survive this, remind me to beat the shit out of your stubborn ass."

There is nothing else in the world Din would ask for.

"It will be my pleasure."

He’s barely moved a step when he hears shots being fired from somewhere outside.

_One._

They weren’t just eight, then.

He drags Cara behind the wall, the kid’s cot tailing after them, well aware that he’s just delaying the inevitable.

He failed.

As a Mandalorian. As a father. As a man. He let everyone he loves down.

Cara falls limp in his arms. Ice fills his veins.

“Cara? Cara!”

He slides to the floor with her, tries to shake her, slap her awake. Her eyes crack open for one second and then fall closed again.

_Please... please, no..._

Losing Cara is not an option. It’s not. It’s _not._

The cot splits open. The child’s ears pop up from inside it, followed by his curious eyes. He looks at Cara’s motionless body, then at Din, as if asking him what is wrong with her.

One last vestige of hope sparks in Din's soul.

“Do your magic,” he begs. He doesn’t care if they’re dead anyway, he just can’t let her go like this.

“Please, kid. Please, I need you to do this for her.”

And the kid complies.

He narrows his huge eyes, hands extended towards Cara. The concentrated face he makes would be hilarious if the situation wasn’t so desperate.

Something happens beneath Din's hands. He tosses his cloak aside, lifts what is left of Cara’s shirt, and sees the miracle happen: the slow disappearance of the wound makes him exhale in relief, while another part of him screams that this is useless: she lost too much blood, it's not going to be enough. Cara's body is growing boneless in his arms, her eyelids heavier.

"No, no, no! Stay with me, Cara. Stay with me!"

More shots are fired on the other side of the wall.

It’s over.

_It’s over._

When he hears blunt footsteps approach, Din surrenders.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes glancing up at the kid, then down at Cara's deadly pale face. “I’m sorry.”

“The way is clear, Master.”

This is... not Gahr Ru's voice. This is-

“IG-11?”

The child coos at the droid.

“Your estimated time of return to the ship was delayed,” IG explains. “My protocol-”

Din is too dazzled to give a damn about that. IG took down the bounty hunters. This droid saved them all.

“Yes, you have a very efficient protocol.” He pulls up Cara, checks her pulse. Faint, but still there.

_Thank you, stars._

She’s alive, but for how long?

“Help me carry her to the ship,” he orders to the droid. “We need to find help.”

IG obeys, walks up to them and bends to pick Cara up from Din's arms.

“Master. You need to let go of her if you want me to carry her.”

Din blinks. It takes him a moment to realise he can hardly make himself release her.

As they rush back to the Razor Crest, he feels his heart pulsing in his throat, a sound so deafening it erases everything else. He almost misses it when IG, sitting in the co-pilot seat, asks: “Where to, Master?”

Din is sitting on the floor behind him, Cara lying in his arms again, barely there, barely breathing.

His stomach clenches.

“Galactic City.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This is not as good as I was hoping because it was supposed to be the beginning of a single one shot, but given the length it took as I wrote it I thought it would be best to post it on its own. The follow-up is coming soon, I promise!
> 
> Some of you might have noticed a particular quote: _He knows what he has to do. He just doesn’t know if he has the strength to do it._ Well, I'm a huge Kylo Ren/Ben Solo fangIrl and the quote was fitting, so...
> 
> Thank you so much to all the beautiful (thirsty? 😅) people who commented the first two parts! You're amazing and keeping my muse working! (You and these two beautiful idiots I'm so in love with!) Keep it coming? ❤
> 
> P.S. Din and Cara are a couple of useless bisexuals and I love them for this.


End file.
